"CREASING" WILD HORSES—MUGGS DISAPPOINTED—A FEAT FOR FICTION—HORSE AND MONKEY—HOOF WISDOM FOR TURFMEN—PROSPECTIVE CLIMATIC CHANGES ON THE PLAINS—THE QUESTION OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION—WANTON SLAUGHTER OF BUFFALO—AMOUNT OF ROBES AND MEAT ANNUALLY WASTED—A STRANGE HABIT OF THE BISON—NUMEROUS BILLS—THE "SNEAK THIEF" OF THE PLAINS.

While we were at breakfast one morning, the guide ran in to say that the herd of wild horses which we had seen on Silver Creek, were feeding toward us, a mile away. I left the table to obtain a view of them, and by Abe's advice carried my rifle, as he suggested that we might "crease" one of them. This feat consists in hitting the upper edge of the bones of the neck with a bullet, the blow striking so high up that it will momentarily paralyze, without fracturing. We had read of it often in tales of Western daring, where the hero mounted the prostrate steed, and, upon its return to consciousness, escaped on its back from numberless difficulties and hosts of Indians.

A short distance out from camp, we turned and saw Muggs following us with a saddle and bridle on his arm. He had suffered grievous wrong at the heels of his mule, and was bent on possessing himself of one of our creased horses. After creeping, with almost infinite caution, within seventy-five yards, we succeeded in placing our bullets exactly where we intended, thereby knocking down two victims, who at once became insensible—and no wonder, for their bones were as effectually fractured as if they had been struck with a sledge-hammer. Muggs' faith in the theory of creasing, however, was unbounded. Up he ran and buckled on the saddle, and got one foot in the stirrup, ready to swing himself into the seat, when the animal rose.

After waiting about ten minutes, our Briton concluded that a dead horse was poor riding, and left us with a very emphatic statement that, in his opinion, capturing a mount with a rifle was "another blarsted Hamerican lie, you know!"

I afterward conversed with several plainsmen about the merits of "creasing," and found that their attempts had invariably ended in the same way as ours had done. The feat may have been possible with smooth-bore rifles, in the hands of those remarkable hunters of old, who were able to shoot away the breath of a pigeon, and hit the eye of a flying hawk; but with breech-loaders I unhesitatingly pronounce creasing an utter impossibility. The achievement sounds well in theory, but, like much else of popular Western lore is somewhat impracticable when fairly tested. I have an idea that the principal market value of "creased" horses in the future, as in the past, will be derived from furnishing creatures of romance with fearful rides. For this purpose, a cracked skeleton would be as apt as a sound one, to carry the rider into many of the scenes with which these tales are wont to harrow our souls.

While crawling up on the herd, we took its census very carefully. I was a little surprised to find there were but twenty-five horses, all told. They were apparently a little larger than the wild ones of Texas, and had bushy manes and tails, and their step was remarkably firm and elastic. They were exceedingly timid creatures, raising their heads constantly, to gaze around. One very interesting circumstance connected with the herd was that among these wild horses we noticed two strangers; one, a feeble old buffalo bull, expelled from his tribe, and seeking their aid against the wolves, and the other, the black pacing stallion.

When we fired, the survivors were off on the instant, and the manner in which their clean hoofs struck the earth, and spurned it, was truly worth seeing. No heaves either, it was plain to see, had ever troubled those full chests. We caught sight of the herd awhile after, on a ridge four miles away, and they were still running at full speed. These were the only wild horses we saw on our trip. In fact, but two or three small droves are believed to exist on the plains, as the great mass of the shaggy-maned thousands, children of those old Spanish castaways, swarm nearer the Pacific.

So timid and fleet are these horses that none of them have ever been captured except during the early spring. They are then poor, and, by hard spurring, can be ridden down. At other times their bottom, and the advantage of having no weight to carry, insure their safety. It is quite probable, however, that a systematic pursuit, of the kind practiced in Texas, might prove successful at any season of the year.

I gazed at our two victims with less satisfaction than at any thing I had ever killed. Shooting horses, dear reader, is a good deal like shooting monkeys. They are both too intimately associated with man to be made food for his powder. One is a very true and faithful servant, and the other, if we may believe Mr. Darwin, was once his ancestor.

In examining the two handsome bodies lying there, I noticed one fact to which I should have liked to draw the attention of the whole learned fraternity of blacksmiths, who mutilate horses, the world over. The hoofs were as solid and as sound as ivory, without a crack or wrong growth of any sort. And why? Turning them up, the secret lay exposed; for there, filling the cavity within—a sponge of life-giving oil—was the frog entire, just as Nature made and kept it. Its business was to feed and moisten the hoof, and this it had done perfectly. No blacksmith had ever gouged it out with his knife, and robbed it anew at every shoeing.

It is noticeable that the equine race, in its wild state, has none of the ills of the species domesticated. The sorrows of horse-flesh are the fruits of civilization. By the study and imitation of Nature's methods, we could greatly increase the usefulness of these valuable servants, and remove temptation from the paths of many men who lead blameless lives, except in the single matter of horse-trades. It may well be queried, perhaps, whether even the patient man of Uz, had he been laid up by a runaway colt instead of boils, could have resisted the temptation to trade it off upon Bildad the Shuhite, when that individual came to condole with him.

As we journeyed onward, we found the soil ever the same, in depth and strength equal to an Illinois prairie. The old cretaceous ocean, and the great lakes, certainly left it rich in deposits. When its surface shall have been broken by the plow, and the water-fall absorbed instead of shed off, the plains will resemble, in appearance and products, any other prairie country. The amount of moisture annually passing over them, in storm-clouds that burst further east, is abundantly sufficient to make the tract very fertile. It is a well established fact in relation to climatic influences, that moisture attracts moisture; and in this region the dry ground, with its few shallow streams, has now no claim upon the summer clouds. The tough buffalo grass has put a lock-jaw on the plain. It can drink nothing from the floods of the rainy season. But pry open the hungry mouth with the plowshare, and the earth will drink greedily. The moisture then absorbed, given up through the agency of capillary attraction, will draw the showers of summer, as they are passing over. Already a marked change has taken place over a portion of the plains, and crops have been grown as far west as Fort Wallace.

The subject of spontaneous generation, I may remark in this connection, became a very interesting one to our party. Wherever the soil has been disturbed, wild sun-flowers spring suddenly into existence. The "grading camps" of the railroads were followed by belts of these self-asserting annuals. The first garden-patch cultivated at Fort Wallace had weeds and insects similar to those that infest gardens elsewhere. In some cases hundreds of miles of barren plain intervened between the spots where the seeds germinated, and the nearest points where other plants of the same variety grew. Neither birds or wind could have carried the seeds in such quantities. Is the theory true that germs fall down to us from other planets? Or, do not the plains offer a strong argument on behalf of spontaneous generation?

Another matter on which the plains appealed to us strongly, pertained to the wanton destruction of its wild cattle. During the year 1871, about fifty thousand buffalo were killed on the plains of Kansas and Colorado alone. Of this number, it will be correct to estimate that about one-third were shot for their robes, as many more for meat, and sixteen thousand or so for sport. Each buffalo could probably have furnished five hundred pounds of meat and tallow, the quantity of the latter being small. When killed for food, only the hind quarters and a small portion of the loin are saved, in all perhaps two hundred pounds. The hides of these are sacrificed, the skin being cut with the quarters, and left on them for their protection. The profits of this great slaughter would, therefore, be about 16,500 robes and 3,300,000 pounds of meat; the waste over 33,000 robes, and probably not less than 20,000,000 pounds of meat. In this computation, the vast herds which range further north are not included. There, however, the waste is comparatively small, as the red man is in the habit of saving the greater portion of the flesh and robes. Of the above twenty million pounds of meat left to rot in the sun, and taint the air of the plains, the greater proportion would furnish sweeter and more nourishing food to the poor classes of our cities than the beef which they are able to obtain.

Let this slaughter continue for ten years, and the bison of the American continent will become extinct. The number of valuable robes and pounds of meat which would thus be lost to us and posterity, will run too far into the millions to be easily calculated. All over the plains, lying in disgusting masses of putrefaction along valley and hill, are strewn immense carcasses of wantonly slain buffalo. They line the Kansas Pacific Railroad for two hundred miles.

Following ordinary sporting parties for an hour after they have commenced smiting the borders of a herd, stop by a few of the monsters that they leave behind, in pools of blood, upon the grass; draw your hunting-knife across the fat hind-quarters, and see how the cuts reveal depths of sweet, nourishing meat, sufficient to supply two hundred starving wretches with an abundant dinner; then if your humanity does not tempt to a shot at the worse than pot-hunters in front, God's bounties have indeed been thrown away upon you.

By law, as stringent in its provisions as possible, no man should be suffered to pull trigger on a buffalo, unless he will make practical use of the robe and the meat. What would be thought of a hunter, in any of the Western States, who shot quails and chickens and left them where they fell? Every citizen, whether sportsman or not, would join in outcry against him. Another matter which the law should regulate relates to the protection of the buffalo cows until after the season when they have brought forth their young. The calf will thrive, though weaned by necessity at a very early age, and the season for shooting cows, although short, would be amply long enough to comport with the chances of future increase.

Probably the most cruel of all bison-shooting pastime, is that of firing from the cars. During certain periods in the spring and fall, when the large herds are crossing the Kansas Pacific Railroad, the trains run for a hundred miles or more among countless thousands of the shaggy monarchs of the plains. The bison has a strange and entirely unaccountable instinct or habit which leads it to attempt crossing in front of any moving object near it. It frequently happened, in the time of the old stages, that the driver had to rein up his horses until the herd which he had startled had crossed the road ahead of him. To accomplish this feat, if the object of their fright was moving rapidly, the animals would often run for miles.

When the iron-horse comes rushing into their solitudes, and snorting out his fierce alarms, the herds, though perhaps a mile away from his path, will lift their heads and gaze intently for a few moments toward the object thus approaching them with a roar which causes the earth to tremble, and enveloped in a white cloud that streams further and higher than the dust of the old stage-coach ever did; and then, having determined its course, instead of fleeing back to the distant valleys, away they go, charging across the ridge over which the iron rails lie, apparently determined to cross in front of the locomotive at all hazards. The rate per mile of passenger trains is slow upon the plains, and hence it often happens that the cars and buffalo will be side by side for a mile or two, the brutes abandoning the effort to cross only when their foe has merged entirely ahead. During these races the car-windows are opened, and numerous breech-loaders fling hundreds of bullets among the densely crowded and flying masses. Many of the poor animals fall, and more go off to die in the ravines. The train speeds on, and the scene is repeated every few miles until Buffalo Land is passed.

Another method of wanton slaughter is the stalking of the herds by men carrying needle-guns. These throw a ball double the weight of the ordinary carbine, and the shot is effective at six hundred yards. Concealed in ravines, the hunter causes terrible havoc with such weapons before the herd takes flight. We were never guilty of ambushing after those two days on the Saline, and of those occasions we were heartily ashamed ever afterward.

One specialty of the plains that deserves mention, and quite as remarkable as its brutes and plants, though of rather more modern origin, is its numerous Bills. Of these, we became acquainted, before our trip was ended, with the following distinct specimens: Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill, California Bill, Rattlesnake Bill, and Tiger Bill, the last named being, as one of our men who had played with him remarked, the "dangererest on 'em all." We also heard of a Camanche Bill and an Apache Bill, but these celebrities it was not our fortune to meet.

I can not dismiss the peculiar characters of the plains without again paying tribute to that unapproachable thief, the cayote. Let no party of travelers leave any thing exposed in camp lighter than an anvil. We lost, in one night, at the hands—or rather the jaws—of these slinking sneak-thieves of the plains, a boot, a pair of leather breeches, and a half-quarter of buffalo calf, besides some smaller articles.